Film Reviews

Roma is a sensitive portrait of a family breaking apart in the broader context of a social crisis. It follows Cleo, a Mixtec Indian, as she performs her daily chores, which include caring for the family’s four children.

A quarter-century since the release of Steven Spielberg’s film

Schindler’s List opened in movie theaters in the US in December 1993. A restored version is now playing in selected theaters. We are reposting today a review published in the International Workers Bulletin, a forerunner of the WSWS, in January 1994.

And Widows, Bohemian Rhapsody

By
Joanne Laurier,
6 December 2018

Jason Reitman’s The Front Runner chronicles the downfall of Gary Hart, the leading contender for the 1988 Democratic Party presidential nomination, whose campaign was abruptly brought to an end by a sex scandal.

Set in 1962, Green Book is a heartfelt film about the relationship between a famed black pianist and his white, working class chauffeur. In At Eternity’s Gate, artist Julian Schnabel treats the last period in the life of legendary Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh.

Bertolucci will be remembered for valuable films he made in the 1960s and 1970s, including La commare secca (1962—English title, The Grim Reaper), Before the Revolution (1964), The Conformist (1970) and 1900 (1976).

The Coens’ latest film is made up of six stories set in a mythical “Old West.” The thread connecting the various episodes is a generally nasty attitude toward humanity, and American humanity in particular.

Each is a relatively unpretentious, low-budget, “independent” film. Each follows a group of middle-class adults as they attempt to navigate certain complicated moral or emotional situations. Each film is slight.

The Overcoat, directed by Patrick Myles, is based on the famed 1842 short story by Russian author Nikolai Gogol. Detainment treats the aftermath of the killing of a toddler on Merseyside, England in 1993.

A great deal of fanfare has surrounded the opening of the film, due principally to the fact that Crazy Rich Asians is the first major Hollywood picture since The Joy Luck Club (1993) to feature an all-Asian cast.

Robin Williams (1951–2014) was an exceptional comic whose ability to create personalities and move among them seemed at times almost supernatural. He contained within himself an apparently infinite number of human types.

A new film biography of Mary Shelley, directed by Saudi filmmaker Haifaa al-Mansour, coincides with the 200th anniversary of the publication of Shelley’s Gothic masterpiece Frankenstein: Or, the Modern Prometheus.

The blindness and stupidity of the identity politics-obsessed upper middle class knows no bounds. This issue comes up most recently in connection with the different critical responses generated by Isle of Dogs and Avengers: Infinity War.

2018 San Francisco International Film Festival—Part 4

Matangi/Maya/M.I.A., a feature-length documentary about rapper-songwriter, “M.I.A.” is a breath of fresh air. First Reformed is a dismal, confused film about a middle-aged former military chaplain turned preacher.

68th Berlin International Film Festival—Part 8

Two feature films, part of the Berlin International Film Festival retrospective section, reflect a militant mood among workers in the late 1920s, in particular their striving for a common struggle and international solidarity.

The World Socialist Web Site interviewed Ish about the making of Failed by the State, a documentary on the Grenfell fire, and the attack launched against it by the Daily Beast and right-wing newspapers in Britain.